Report of the Mission in Rwanda (August 2010)

written by Teresa Moio (Volunteer)

 

To All Benefactors and Friends of the Nolite Timere onlus

 

First of all, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Teresa Moio and I have been working as volunteer for almost a year.

When some months ago I was told that I would go to Rwanda I welcomed the news with emotion and enthusiasm. An enthusiasm which was not betrayed, because Africa deeply touched my heart.

I arrived in Kigali with Rita last August 17th. At the Airport we were welcomed by Sister Delfina, the Mother Superior of the Institute “F. Smaldone”, and Sister Fatima of the Apostolic Nunciature.

After having a lunch at the Institute and a short visit at the Apostolic Nunciature, we arrived at the Cité of Nazareth during the night. At last I was visiting the Cité where we were overwhelmed by the warmth of the children!

Along the road to the Cité I had admired a country which seemed to me very different from what I had imagined, with its amazing landscapes, its green hills…unforgettable!

The rhythm of life in Africa is completely different from ours. Along the roads you can see hundreds of people going around. Women with their children who go to the fields in order to sell what they can harvest, young boys and girls who walk for miles in order to go to school. The most moving memory of that chaos is represented by a group of little children, of three maybe four years old, walking around with yellow bucketful on their heads searching for some clean water. Children who ready know what sacrifice means. Nevertheless, they are always ready to smile and be grateful even for a simple kind word, a caress or a candy, friendly gestures which are very important to them.

I will never forget the children I met at the Institute “Padre Vito Misuraca” and at the Orphanage “Mother Teresa of Calcutta”, their faces and their eyes. What a sadness! And what to say about the little children of the Cité of Nazareth… During the first days, they all seemed alike to me. I had heard a lot about each of them, but I was not able to associate names to faces. It was not important to them, because they just were happy to see you and to give you a big hug!

Different considerations for the older guests of the Cité. They were more cautious towards us. We were the foreigners, the “white women”, those who were expected to give them money in order to “lighten” the “white man’s burden”. In almost all of these boys and girls I noticed apathy and a sense of mistrust in the future, maybe a consequence of the terrible years of the genocide of 1994. Of course, there are some among them who seem to have enough strength not to give up in order to do something good for their country.

My impression is that the economic and social problems of the country are still huge. The country does really want to go ahead, at least the younger part of it. Adults have lost any hope in the future. Maybe they will never be able to forget all the horrors of the genocide, all the killings and rapes, corpses thrown away like rubbish. But the young people can find in themselves enough strength to survive to the disasters of the past. That is the reason why I think that the future of Rwanda is in their hands. But they need our help.

We have the moral duty to help them by investing in their country. It is not easy, but we have to try. Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say: “What we can do is just a drop in the ocean, but if we did not give that drop the ocean would lack it”.